3 ms·

> Or are people finding roms, perhaps intended for use with emulators, and loading those onto physical cartridges and selling them without renumeration or permi

> Or are people finding roms, perhaps intended for use with emulators, and loading those onto physical cartridges and selling them without renumeration or permission? I think they're talking about this case (based on the wording "rom hack cartridges"). Someone takes an original game ROM and modifies it in some way (translation, level mods, whatever). Someone else takes the modified code, burns it onto actual hardware, and sells the result. > Sort of related: I know this requires some specialized equipment to make new cartridges, but do you know if they sell blank cartridges that can just be loaded with games? The usual method that I know is to remove the ROM chips from a donor cartridge (a working game), and replace them with chips flashed with customized data. The donor cart would need to provide the same custom chips/memory mappers/whatever that the game code expects to be present.

KGIII 9y ago
Ah! That explains the method, at least. I'm a bit surprised that the market is large enough to support the effort and expense. My limited exposure suggests that it isn't a very large market and I'd been led to believe that it wasn't very profitable. Though, I suppose it becomes more profitable if you're not paying to develop the game or for the rights to distribute the game. I wonder if there's technically a possibility for, and a market large enough, for generic cartridges - perhaps several kinds that had different standardized hardware in them.
- khedoros1 9y ago
  I don't know much about market size, but I know that some developers are working on physical releases of new games for old consoles. Written from scratch, with new IP. I found references to a few on my own, then found this article that mentions most of the ones that I found: https://www.theverge.com/2017/5/9/15584416/new-games-retro-consoles-nes-snes-sega-genesis-famicom https://www.theverge.com/2017/5/9/15584416/new-games-retro-c... It says that the NES game Star Versus has sold about 300 copies since its release (in 2014, I think). So, there's an idea of the market, I suppose. I haven't found much in the way of information about its development, so far. There was a forum post that mentioned that it seems to use a new, undocumented memory mapper chip, which implies that the developer produced their own, rather than use the "donor" method that I suggested earlier. Just for curiosity's sake, an SNES game that was developed in 2013, and is available for purchase (I've no idea if they have the rights to sell it or not) : https://console5.com/store/piko-super-4-in-1-multicart-super-nintendo.html https://console5.com/store/piko-super-4-in-1-multicart-super...

KGIII 9y ago

Ah! That explains the method, at least. I'm a bit surprised that the market is large enough to support the effort and expense. My limited exposure suggests that it isn't a very large market and I'd been led to believe that it wasn't very profitable. Though, I suppose it becomes more profitable if you're not paying to develop the game or for the rights to distribute the game. I wonder if there's technically a possibility for, and a market large enough, for generic cartridges - perhaps several kinds that had different standardized hardware in them.

khedoros1 9y ago
I don't know much about market size, but I know that some developers are working on physical releases of new games for old consoles. Written from scratch, with new IP. I found references to a few on my own, then found this article that mentions most of the ones that I found: https://www.theverge.com/2017/5/9/15584416/new-games-retro-consoles-nes-snes-sega-genesis-famicom https://www.theverge.com/2017/5/9/15584416/new-games-retro-c... It says that the NES game Star Versus has sold about 300 copies since its release (in 2014, I think). So, there's an idea of the market, I suppose. I haven't found much in the way of information about its development, so far. There was a forum post that mentioned that it seems to use a new, undocumented memory mapper chip, which implies that the developer produced their own, rather than use the "donor" method that I suggested earlier. Just for curiosity's sake, an SNES game that was developed in 2013, and is available for purchase (I've no idea if they have the rights to sell it or not) : https://console5.com/store/piko-super-4-in-1-multicart-super-nintendo.html https://console5.com/store/piko-super-4-in-1-multicart-super...